Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Bunnies On The Grass, Alas” and “A Close Call”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Not hugely in focus or anything like that, but still characteristic. 
You may wonder what the green blanket is doing pushed up against the front door. The standard answer is “It’s just there”, which is, of course, extremely enlightening. In the winter, cold air comes in under the door, and so the blanket functions as what they call a “draft dodger”. At other times of the year, it prevents people from bashing in the front door and taking our manor house by storm. So the guy I live with says, anyway.
I was about to say something else, but now I’ve forgotten. Here I am about to say something else, but forgetting what it was.
Oh, I know. It’s nest-building time around here. (I could have remembered just by looking at the title of this evening’s post.)
The guy I live with took pictures through the kitchen window, which is double-glazed. He says he hasn’t had a glazed doughnut in about twenty years, and so double-glazed sounds even better. I have no idea what he’s talking about, as usual, though if it’s food, I understand completely.
Anyway, the pictures.
The nest is going into the alpine fir, Abies lasiocarpa. 
I’m glad I don’t have to build a nest. I have my fort, and then my bed, upstairs, with the soft Pottery Barn sheets, and I let the guy I live with sleep on part of it too. He set up the box fan in the window a few nights ago, and it blows really nice chilly air onto my face, while my hindquarters are tucked warmly under the blanket. I like that a lot.
My mommy made a little platform years ago, to put nesting material on. Pieces of string, burlap, all kinds of stuff like that, which the birds could use for building their nests. The robin here is using last year’s blue grama grass for nest material, because the platform is gone now.
The guy I live with left me alone last night to go to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society’s (whew) plant sale, and came back with a lot fewer plants than I thought he would. He forgot his camera and also forgot to take pictures of the plants he bought. He said he was going back to Denver Botanic Gardens, where the sale took place, today, and take some pictures, but his belt broke, and he didn’t know where his other belt was. He found it this afternoon, but said that DBG probably had a rule about pants, which I didn’t understand, since I don’t wear them. He also said something about using a piece of rope and maybe some red suspenders, but that didn’t happen. Fortunately, I think.
So today some gardening was done, after the robin finished collecting pieces of dried grass. I helped by watching.
I think the metal pole that holds the solar lamp really is leaning. My mommy wouldn’t’ve stood for such a thing. For her, everything had to be level in all the ten directions. The guy I live with makes mental notes of such things, this leaning, that needing to be picked up or weeded out, or moved, but he claims his mind is going, slowly. I’m not sure what he means by “slowly”.
There are a few obligatory plant pictures to show you, too. Here’s Fritillaria pallidiflora, which the guy I live with grew from seed. He says in China it’s a medicinal crop.
And if it’s blue you want, check out the buds on Penstemon arenicola. The guy I live with had a terrible time getting the camera to focus on the buds, for some reason.
And finally, the lilac, ‘Annabel’. The guy I live with says that ‘Annabel’ is “the Sharon Stone of lilacs”. I don’t know what that means. Like so much other stuff he says. I suspect most of it is just babbling.
My mommy loved lilacs. ‘Annabel’ is a “hyacinthiflora” type, a hybrid, and it blooms earlier than the regular lilacs. The whole way back garden is scented of lilacs right now, just by this one lilac, though it’s pretty big. He got this, and several others, from Heard Gardens in Iowa, years ago. They grew lilacs on their own roots, which sounds reasonable. I wouldn’t like being on someone else’s paws, that’s for sure.
I think that’s really all I have to talk about tonight. I guess I’ll let you go now, with me in another characteristic pose.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 